Arthur Andersen, who in 1913 founded the firm of Arthur
Andersen, said during a lecture on ethics at Northwestern
University at the time of the Great Depression of 1929: "To
preserve the integrity of the reports, the accountant must insist
upon absolute independence of judgment and action." The core
principle underlying Andersen's understanding of ethics may
have been "think straight talk straight" – the very
axiom that was imbued in him by his mother. What was it, then, that
dragged the century-old firm of Arthur Anderson, once among the
world's most reputable, into the Enron scandal?
ExxonMobil, who made their first move to develop the Natuna gas
field off Indonesia in 1981 -some six years before the word
"sustainability" was even defined- knew that this immense
natural gas reserve was 70% CO2, or carbon dioxide. Back then the
connection between carbon emission and climate change was largely
unknown. Once Exxon identified such a connection the firm, for many
years,
